A Holiday Wish

My wife Vera has taken a real beating throughout the course of my blogs and she's been a real sport about it, so as my Christmas present to her I'm not going to talk about her this week.

My holiday wish for all of you is that you may have a mind that is open to everything and attached to nothing. Always want but never need. Let go of your attachments to what you've been trained to believe. Our attachments are the source of all our problems, the need to be right, to possess someone or something, to win at all costs. If we aren't attached to the outcome there is no failure only inner peace and success. Don't let your happiness or success be dependent on an attachment to any thing, any place and especially any person. Happiness is not something we receive from the world it is something we give to the world, so get out there and start giving.

On behalf of Vera, Adrian, Dana and myself I would like to wish you all a great holiday season and a Happy New Year filled with lots of fun, hugs, excitement, mystery, adventure, success, love and lack of attachment. HO HO HO

She wants to go to Disneyworld

She says, I want to take the kids to Disneyworld. I say, I'd rather go somewhere just you and I and relax. No I want to go to Disneyworld, she says. That's a great idea, that's exactly what I was thinking, I say.

Let's go in December, it's the slow time and apparently some of the line ups for the rides are only half an hour she says (wow, only half an hour, I wouldn't stand in a line for half an hour if the bank was giving away free money). She finds out we can buy a fast pass which gives us the right to walk for 2 kilometers to arrive at a ride 2 hours before we are going to board it so we can swipe our fast pass and return 2 hours later to board at a designated time (fast? convenient? hmm.....). I say, why don't we just get in line now with the great unwashed that didn't buy a fast pass and get this over with. She gave me that look and off we went merrily swiping the week away.

They way I see it, when you're a kid, everyday is like being in Disneyland. It's the parents that need the holiday. We work all year to feed, dress, undress, wipe off, medicate, educate and stimulate our kids, then we spend months scrimping and saving and planning how we can rescue the poor little inmates from their life of drudgery and we sweep them off to far away magical locations where we spend a week feeding, dressing, undressing, wiping off, medicating, educating, and stimulating them.

Maybe I'm missing something but, aren't holidays supposed to be a break from the routine of daily life????

The house is expanding and so is my wife.

Guys, if you are looking for something to spice up your marriage, try what I did. Get your wife pregnant, move her, your 5 year old kid and yourself into the basement of your house that has no kitchen facilities, create some makeshift walls with plastic vapour barrier, sleep on fold out canvas cots and hire some unreliable, cranky, smelly guys to rip the back wall off your house and add a rear addition plus completely gut and renovate the existing part of the house that you are living in.

Nothing says I love you like a bouquet of drywall dust and a box of construction debris.

Now she's complete. NOT.

Finally one of my little friends swims up river and arrives successfully at his intended destination. Kid number 2 is on the way. I figure, now she's complete. Not. The house is too small she says. Hmmm. She never wanted to have kids and never wanted to live in the suburbs, now we can't breed fast enough, we're gonna live in Leave it to Beaver Land forever and we need a bigger house. She was happy, I wasn't.

Where do you want to move to I said? Nowhere, let's add onto our house she said. That's too much hassle, I'd rather move I said. No, I want to add on to our house she said. That's a great idea, that's exactly what I was thinking I said. I learned a long time ago, if you're gonna lose, lose quick.

I've created a monster

Child birth. It was the most drastic and rapid personality transformation I have ever seen. She went from a tough, no one is gonna mess with me attitude to a drool covered, diaper changing, baby loving mom. Life was perfect I thought. Not. One day she comes home and says, I don't feel complete. No sweat I said, take a pottery course. "No, I need more", she says.

So back at it we went but it wasn't working this time. We tried everything, standing on our heads, jumping up and down, wearing boxers instead of briefs, cutting out alcohol, coffee and stress. None of it worked and lead to more stress and the need to drink more alcohol and coffee.

The last straw was when I had to put a sample in a jar, put it in my shirt pocket to keep it warm and rush it to the lab for testing where I waited in line for 20 minutes to see the receptionist. Once I reached the front of the line I passed the receptionist my requisition form and was about to reach into my pocket for the jar when the receptionist says (in a loud voice that boomed throughout the crowded waiting room) "sir, do you have your sperm sample"? I broke into a cold sweat and thought I was going to faint. I didn't think life could get any worse. I was wrong. Two days later the lab phoned to say they had lost my sample and could I bring another over right away.

Honey, let's meet the neighbours.

Being the type of people that never wanted to meet anyone we didn't already know, we had lived in our home for 4 years and hardly knew our neighbours. That all changed when our first child was born. We started taking the baby for walks through the hood. Up until this time, whenever we ventured out we would wait till dark, make a dash for our car, roll up the windows and drive through stop signs and red lights until we were safely beyond the borders of Leave it to Beaver Land. On one of our baby strolls we walked about 10 houses south from ours and realized there was a park overlooking the Bluffs with a view of the lake that was full of happy, chatty people with kids of their own. That was like living in your house for 4 years and never opening that one closet door and one day opening it and realizing you have an indoor pool and there's a party going on with a bunch of strangers.

It's funny how if you're walking a baby in a stroller or dragging a hunk of fur on a leash, it's like automatic membership into the club. It's a great ice breaker and you share a common bond of suffering. Whether it's a baby human or a baby pet, you can spend hours with other club members discussing what and when to feed them and then try to figure out how to train them where and when to go number 2.

And to think I wasted the first 36 years of my life being irresponsible, self indulgent, narrow minded, happy, fullfilled and child free.

And then there were three

For years I wanted to have a kid and she didn't. After many failed attempts (this is the only process I can think of where failure can be so enjoyable) it worked. I was happy, she wasn't. I figured this was better than both of us being unhappy.

I still have the first ultrasound picture of Skeletor our bony bundle of joy.

The minute Skeletor was born, aliens kidnapped my wife and replaced her with a baby loving human that could only speak Googoogagaese. Noone was allowed to touch or look at the baby. This was her toy and she wasn't going to share it, not only that, now she wanted more.

Living in Leave it to Beaver Land

I remember the first day I moved to the neighbourhood. I was driving down my street and kids were riding their bikes, smiling people were out mowing their lawns and chatting to their neighbours and as I drove by they were waving to me. Where I had just moved from, if you had a bike it got stolen, there were no lawns, I didn't speak the same language as my neighbours and if someone waved as you drove by you ducked incase he had a gun in his hand.

Over the course of the 1st weekend my wife and I had a big fight about whose fault it was that we had ended up way out here in Leave it to Beaver Land and she left me to return to the comfort of the noise, smog and congestion of our old neighbourhood. I was jealous of her escape from this happy world and would have followed her except she had taken the car and I feared that if I walked to the bus stop I may be accosted by some pleasant mower that may ask my name or worse, offer to weed my lawn.

Eventually my wife returned home because although she had the car I had the cash.

At the time the area was a mix of retired, original owners and young families with kids. We were neither. We were in our 30's, kid free and happy. We threw alot of noisy, outdoor parties, had a revolving door of tenants living in our basement apartment and the street in front of our house looked like a parking lot for rent-a-wreck.

I remember our first Oct.31 in the house. We had invited friends over for dinner and we heard a knock at the door. I went to answer it thinking it was our guests and heard that horrifying sound... TRICK or TREAT. I turned out the lights and told my wife to lie on the floor and crawl for the back door as I phoned our friends to warn them of the invasion. Needless to say we ate out that night and every Oct. 31st until our first child was born. Then everything changed.